» As mentioned in my mobile post box earlier today, I picked up the Justice League New Frontier Double DVD Boxed set with Hal Jordan Action figure at Best Buy today. Hal's a tiny action figure, but quite nice looking. With any luck I'll post some more pictures later this weekend.

Super busy week at work is over, hooray. It's nice to come home and have enough energy to do a thing or two.

This evening I worked on writing an image manager for Adam and Comfort's website. I've been working on a site with them for the launch of The Uniques their Independent Comic Book. The image manager I wrote is going to handle all the sketches, fan art, wallpapers etc. that will be available on the site (most of which is done and looking quite spiffy).

I've also seen a press proof of The Uniques first issue and it looks great! The website for the comic and creators should be up early next week. The Uniques #1, 35 pages of Superhero goodness, will be available both in print and as a CBZ file for purchase when the site launches, so save up a few pennies this week in anticipation of that! Details will be on Adam and Comfort's Blog as well as here on mine, and then on finer comic blogging site everywhere (we hope)!

Unfortunately, blogging on my own blog is going to be a little light again this week as I put my energies toward helping put those finishing touches on A&C's site. Things should be back to normal around here soon I hope, thanks for sticking around!

» More playing around with combining RSS feeds for the mobile section at the top of the current blog page.

I learned alot about multi-dimensional arrays this morning and figured out a way to combine RSS feeds on my site so that I don't have the time delay involved in using Yahoo Pipes to do that. I also figured out how to convert the RSS timestamp strings into a unix timestamp that I then put into some code I found that will sort multi-dimensional arrays. I do not fully understand how the multi-dimensional array sorting is functioning, but it does appear to be working, so hooray for that.

What does this mean in layman's terms? Besides Twitter, Utterz, and Jott posts in the mobile section, I can now send emails to the mobile section via Mailbucket.org and they all get combined into one.

Combining the Mailbucket Email to RSS functionality will also let me CC my blog when I send people emails. Which means, when I email a friend a link or a note, I can choose to also have that email show up automatically on my blog. Don't worry though, YOUR emails to me won't show up on the blog. :)

It was the busy week of the cycle at work this week so that explains most of that volume drop, the odd part is, until I just looked at my blog and my last post having been on Tuesday at Lunch, I hadn't realized just how fast and how much of a blur this week was.

This weekend is going to be pretty busy as well, but next week, thankfully, unless something unexpected comes up should be a much lighter week, so there should be a few more posts posted herwithin.

» I wrote some really cool code today and am very pleased with myself. Nothing Earth-shattering and nothing that hasn't been done a thousand times by a thousand other programers, but it was new for me.

I can do something today that I couldn't do yesterday, and that's cool.

The code was primarily for a friends' website I'm working on, but it's also something I've wanted to integrate into my site, and I'm looking forward to that.

» I saw Jumper at the theatre last night. As I mentioned in my Twitter, it wasn't a deep movie, but I liked it. Hayden Christensen plays an Anakin type character in this film. Samuel L Jackson doesn't so much act, but personify cool as the villain and the whole movie comes across as a delightful bit of superhero (in the general sense, as there is no spandex herein) wish fulfillment for so inclined members of the audience. I could see this movie serving as a great foundation for a TV series in much the same way as the Buffy movie did.

At the very least I hope they make a Jumper II. Don't expect a deep movie, but Go See!

(Oh yeah... I almost forgot, a large part of the plot takes place in Ann Arbor, Michigan... so if that's a cool thing for you, and it was for me, then there's an extra reason to go see.)

» I didn't go outside at all today. In fact my curtains have been pulled all day too, so I also haven't looked outside all day either, but I hear over IM that it's quite awful outside.

» Alot of people ask me, "Chris what do you think of Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo." (Ok, nobody asks me that...but...) I say, "I don't like it, I don't like it at all." Microsoft has quite a nice business going on right now with the OS's and the Office Apps etc., and they've been trying to be a Yahoo and a Google on their own with MSN for sometime. It hasn't been working (and that's not even true really, since lots of people use MSN, the only issue is they are not #1 or #2), so instead of continuing to compete they are trying to buy their competition. That just doesn't seem like a good thing to me.

» I saw an article that Starbucks was going to have Free Wi-Fi, reading the details however, reveals that you have to have a Starbucks debit card to take advantage of that. That's not quite what one would think of when one here's the term "free wi-fi". Technically true, but not really.

» I use Google Reader as my main window onto the day to day of the web. One nice thing about using RSS feeds thru a program like Google Reader is that like email, the new article arrives in your "Reader Inbox" very shortly after it's created. the downside to that is if you click on an article right away, often noone has had a chance to comment on it. Since often comments have more useful information than the articles themselves, I like to "star" (favorite) articles of interest in reader and come back to them in a couple days to see what comments were left on them.

» I installed the Greasemonkey addon to Firefox on my Eee PC and then installed the Google Reader Minimalistic script from userscripts.org. The combination of those two extras makes Google Reader usuable on the Eee PC without going into fullscreen mode, as it hides that big header section at the top of the Google Reader page. If you are on the Eee you may also want to install Fullerscreen as it helps maximize your screen real estate on the mini-marvel too.

» Spokentext.net is a neat site I just discovered, you can upload text, word docs, pdfs, etc. to it and it will convert it to a machine read spoken MP3 file using your choice of voices. It stores the file for 7 days with the free account, but you can download the mp3s and keep them, or repost them somewhere else before that time expires. To try it out, I uploaded the text to the Tell Tale Heart. The MP3 File is 12 minutes long. It will last unil 2/22/08.

I think Valentines day is a lovely holiday, plus it has the decency to not take over the whole month with itself. Some holidays are absolutely hoggish with the calendar, taking up weeks, months and entire seasons. The other nice thing about Valentines day, it doesn’t drag every person or relative you know into celebrating it with you. A significant other, a kid maybe and, at worst, a sentimental mother and you're probably done.

In some ways, the original commercial holiday is one of the least commercial holidays now.

» Not alot of surfing this weekend. I've been busy with other things mostly.

As always I'm working my way though a huge backlog of RSS stared items. Most of the links below orginated in mid January on other sites. But hey maybe you weren't on the net much that week and now they're new to you.

» I have a little bit of that Michigan winter funk going on right now. There's a good 4 months or so of the year that this state can be just downright depressing to live in. We're solidly in about month 3 of that right now.

» I bought the Mxtkpyltx action figure that came out this past week. It's very nice as these things go. Pictures of that eventually, I would imagine.

» Watched this week's Bill Mahr Real Time this morning. The show was losing relavance last season, and this season without it's writers it's been pretty bad too. Bill went off the rails at the end of his show on his healthy food crusade topic, much to the confusion/uncomfortableness of his guests.

Let's Go Surfing

» I like the design of this two piece desk. The same sort of thing could probably work well in wood.

» Stand-up computing harness/table, not a bad idea, and a pretty good price point at $34.95. You could probably make it for cheaper, but it would hardly be worth the time.

» Cuepropter.com is a very nice javascript based web based telepropter application. You paste your text into the window and then it will fullscreen scroll the text for you as you read/film yourself.

» Paul Dini on modern American Movie Animation. Lot's more than the excerpt below at the link.
via The Beat

Your primary objective as a modern animation feature storyteller is to get the audience members emotionally charged (i.e., distracted from logic gaps and not thinking too much) so they will be ready for your big finale. This usually consists of the hero defeating the villain (almost always by some initial violent action of the villain that the hero has “cleverly” used to boomerang back on the bad guy; real heroes never being allowed to slay dragons on their own these days) and the villain falling to their death from a great height, the only acceptable way for a baddie to meet their end in a cartoon (Gaston, Frollo, the bear in “The Fox & The Hound,” Scar, the poacher in “Rescuers II”, anyone notice a trend here?). If the villain can trip over the edge while trying to get in one last cowardly stab at the hero, so much the better. The demise of the bad guy puts everyone in a good mood, so the sidekicks fire up the juke box, or strike up the band, or simply break into song, and while the hero and heroine share a modest kiss, everyone rocks out over the end credits.

We don't just need change. Change is too small a word. We need a new start. These sorts of things are taking it too far. Party over country, is taking it to far. Winning over civility is taking it too far.

» I watched Juno last night. I thought it was an enjoyable quirky little movie. After about a half hour I noticed that basically the lead was a pint sized junior version of Janeane Garofalo. Although aimless, the characters are entertaining, and if you like creative conversational referencing in that Clerks sort of swearing way, you'll enjoy this film too.

Juno was good, but I don't think it should be an Oscar nominee for Best Picture.

» Also watched another episode of Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles. Not last night's episode, but the one from two weeks ago with the Terminator in the bath. I like the show so far. It's not the most spectacular show ever, but it really hearkens back to the old 80s hero on the run adventure shows, a format that has been missing from the airwaves for awhile.

» Today's Super Tuesday. If someone runs away with the nomination and it all gets decided tonight, will they lay off the coverage for awhile? It seems like 8 months or so is going to be a long time to watch only two candidates bicker back and forth continually. Here's hoping the TV News machine is going to have to find something else to also cover.

I haven't missed a beat with the Writer strike in effect. There's so much to watch, read and listen to even without network tv that it's just crazy comprehending it all

Speaking of TV, I've been enjoying Miro this week. I've moved my watching of the nightly news into my studio as I've been downloading NBC's newscast everyday now.

As anyone visiting this blog may have noticed I've been enjoying tinkering with my mobile update section at the top of the current blog page. I've got Utterz messages posting to Twitter which are now included in the above stream, just incase I feel the need to rapidly post a longer audio rant. Utterz is supposed to undergo some transformation on Monday, so that may be interesting as well.

Still on the mobile blog topic, I will probably add some form of video posting to the above also. I haven't tried Utterz with my camcorder function of my phone yet, but if that doesn't work I may rig up something via Youtube, which I know I can post to from the phone and then scrape the videos I want out of the RSS feed.

Sat, 25 May 2013 07:57:39 -0700
I?m not a fan of the new Flickr redesign. It?s not even that I don?t like the visual look of it.My primary beef is: without warning they completely changed the service for paying customers. I?ve payed for a Pro account for years under the assumption that paying for a service would provide a little more reliability. Flickr has shown that not to be the case, so I?m planning to use it far less frequently and probably far differently than the personal photo site of record I have been using it as. (I?m also not pleased with their likely upcoming attention/advertising model)

I was able to put all my photos into one Set and download the full size images using a free service called flickandshare.com, so I have everything safely out of the service now. Likely I will eventually set up my own simple photo gallery (and give these photos a new home) on my website at chris-karath.com. Hosting your own services and codes seem to be the most reliable method for content that you want around for years to come.

Photos that are here now, will probably continue to be here, Yahoo willing, into the future.

Since Flickr has shown itself to be of unpredictable stability, and it appears to be transforming into more a social network than a photo service, I?ll probably plan on treating it as such. If you subscribe to my account for the action figures, I?ll probably from time to time still post a picture or two of those here with links back to my own site where I?ll likely start posting more photos.

If you follow for my personal photos, following me on Twitter or my personal blog atchris-karath.com will probably be your best bet. --- Best wishes, Chris.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
I've never actually taken the full tour of the Museum. It was free today, so we went through it. It's nicely done for it's sort of thing.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
Those light poles to the shore should be dry land

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:01 -0700
Stairways to nowhere. Grand Rapids.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:00 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:59 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:58 -0700
Grand Rapids Art Museum. This display is by a new guy who just joined our team at work.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 06:49:01 -0700

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 12:17:53 -0700
Both these guys have contributed a lot to comics. I'm not implying anything with the choice of pose. I figure in classic comic parlance though, these two comic heroes would be obligated to fight before teaming up to defeat some great evil.

Recent Blog Comments

Thread: p1825 Post by Jolloway2013-02-23 12:23:49 Hi Cris and other people who view this sight,
I just started a blog site jolloway.co.uk and I wonderd if anyone can give me any tips on blogging. I am curently using a site called word press to host me blog. I start around about a month ago and I\'m really struggling with it and if you do reply I\'m only 11 and found this sight by a photo in google Images.
-Josh
P.S. I love the background XP

Thread: p1706 Post by Chris2012-10-27 13:29:47 Fortunately, I resisted the DC/Master Bundles as they were pretty much only bundled with basic figures I already had. Had they been bundled with more unique DC figures, I might have alot more Masters figures at this point ;)

Thread: p1706 Post by De2012-10-27 13:06:27 I almost bit on Masters of the Universe when they were being bundled with DC Universe figures in the two-packs. I\'ve also liked the blending of sci-fi and fantasy but a lad only has so much room :-)

Thread: p1674 Post by T. Bass2012-10-24 20:55:50 Hi Chris:
Like you, I bought and just received an ONDA V701. Mine took 32 days (!) to arrive from China (bought from gadgetdealer.com... avoid like plague), and the box was beat to hell, but it seems to work fine ....with one exception.
That said, I like the tablet thus far, but a couple of things aren\'t flying right. One, it was advertised as having Adobe Flash ver. 11.1, but instead, mine came with 10.2. Yours? Not sure this matters, as Flash is going the way of the dodo-bird as far as Android goes.
My only real complaint thus far, and that despite trying everything I could find online, I cannot get NetFlix to work. This was/is one of the main reasons I bought it, as they advertised that it \"works with NetFlix\". I don\'t know whether it\'s the tablet, or the app that is the problem, but nonetheless, no love from NetFlix at this point.
I don\'t know if you are subscribed to Netflix, but if you are, I sure would like to know if it works for you on your V701, and if so, how did you get it going, and what settings are you\'re using to make it work? Appreciate hearing from you.
Best,
T. Bass
Applegate, Oregon

Thread: p1557 Post by davy2012-08-24 17:58:58 i kind of agree with you, and i\'m sure bale had the best intentions but the whole media circus at times is disturbing.
but if to had to pick on whether bale should have visited or not i\'d rather he visit for the sole reason that if he made any of the survivors feel good,even if it was only for the briefest moments, then it was worth it.
the victims medical and emotonals needs should be put first and if bale\'s visit helped any of them emotionally then i\'m glad